1. Apple takes privacy and data safety seriously. It invests a significant amount of engineering effort into keeping user data safe. It doesn't comply with government requests unless forced, after deploying its vast legal means to hold them back.
2. Other consumer electronics devices aren't built in factories that are any different or better than those of Foxconn. While it doesn't absolve Apple from taking some responsibility, RMS should have called for avoiding mobile devices altogether if he's so worried about personnel abuse.
3. Fortunately or not, digital platforms aren't exempt from real world rules and laws. If something is prohibited in some territory, we can't seriously expect foreign companies who do business there to ignore local laws and regulations. Would you be so lenient towards a Chinese company which operates in USA disregarding all intellectual property laws? About a Japanese media company operating in Europe that markets material that would constitute underaged pornography?
4. We need to respect sovereignty and local customs. If there's a lesson to be learnt from the Arab Spring uprisings and their incredibly bloody outcomes is that freedom of information requires a certain societal foundation, and can't be thought of as an absolute universal value. Even the Western world is in a disarray following the information propagation offered by online platforms; to expect a society with much weaker civil institution and foundations to face the same challenges is wrong. Therefore, when Apple is asked to block content in China by the local authorities and complies, it's not any more than respecting the rule of the land.
The alternative to that is that the Chinese would create their own Apple (which they of course do), and that's worse for everyone at the end. It leads to a bisected global economy in the style of the Iron Curtain. I'd much rather have Apple operating in China and constantly pushing against government regulation than see the Chinese setting up their own Apple run by government cronies which would pipe user data right into the agencies of Beijing.
5. That aside, some of Apple's behavior (as illustrated by Spotify lately) is downright predatory, intended to lock Apple users to inferior alternatives. I don't like that one bit. On the balance though, I support Apple's discretion with my dollars, because I feel they are selling to me rather than selling me, and because their devices are great.